CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, February 7, 2011

by William Hamilton, Ph.D.

Muslim Brotherhood: Exchanging dictatorships

All across the Crescent of Islam, we are seeing secular Islamic dictatorships under attack from the radical Islamic fundamentalists who want to turn those secular Islamic dictatorships into radical, Islamic-fundamentalist dictatorships like the one in Iran. As usual, the radicals pro-democracy façade duped the western media.

The uproar in Egypt recalls the time when Wonder Wife (Penny) and this author were in South Korea traveling with Arnaud and Alexandra de Borchgrave, Admiral Elmo and Mouza Zumwalt, Boston University president, John Silber, and Madame Jehan Sadat, the widow of the assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. For someone who started out as a paperboy for the The Anadarko Daily News, that was an exciting trip. At the time, Wonder Wife was working as a stringer for the Voice of America.

We arranged a Voice of America interview with Madame Sadat. We listened in awe as the beautiful Madame Sadat recounted how her husband signed the peace treaty with Israel, traveled to Israel to close the deal, and then, in 1981, was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood. She told how, while first lady of Egypt, she founded a group to promote the rights of Muslim women.

Madame Sadat is good with names and faces. A year later, we made eye contact with her in Dulles International Airport. Naturally, we did not approach until she motioned for us to come sit with her. Madame Sadat thanked Penny for the Voice of America interview. She said it helped her efforts to improve the lot of women in the Muslim world. How odd that the Obama Administration has been promoting the Muslim Brotherhood which killed Madame Sadat’s husband and now demands that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel be revoked.

Given the Obama Administration’s affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood, some Internet wag suggested the U.S. and Egypt swap presidents; however, that would not work because the Egyptians demand that their presidents be Egyptian citizens.

During the current Egyptian crisis, Arnaud de Borchgrave, who speaks at least five languages, has a much better grip on what is really happening than the mono-lingual American mainstream media who must rely on the relatively few Egyptians who speak English. Writing for United Press International, de Borchgrave, who has interviewed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarack a dozen times over the last 30 years, recalls advice offered by Mubarack just a week after the 9/11 attacks.

President Mubarack told de Borchgrave: “I know you want to retaliate massively, but there is one thing you must not do. Do not send American troops to fight a new war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Such an operation must be conducted by Muslim troops alone. If U.S. troops and other NATO contingents are dispatched, America will find itself cast as the villain in a war against Islam which is precisely what the Taliban want.”

Stratfor, one of the private intelligence sources to which this columnist subscribes, suggests President Mubarack may be residing in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the mouth of the Gulf of Aquba. Per the Egyptian-Israel peace treaty, neither side is supposed to have troops there; however, about 800 Egyptian troops are reported in Sharm el-Sheikh. So far, no public protest from Israel. Should President Mubarack decide to depart Egypt, the coastline of Saudi Arabia is only 15 miles away.

Annual toll revenues from the Suez Canal are about $4.5 billion dollars. So, the Muslim Brotherhood might not want to close the canal, although all it takes is one sunken ship in one of the canal’s narrow stretches. In normal times, the U.S., as the world’s de facto guarantor of freedom of the seas, might consider closure of the Suez Canal by the Muslim Brotherhood as an act of war. But then, given the Obama Administration’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, these times are not normal.

Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Naval College and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the U.S. Army War College. He was also educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.